On the Compound Nature of Numerals in English

Abstract

This paper explores the nature of English numerals, which are sometimes treated heterogeneously as compounds and syntactically composite numerals. Noting that “power-of-ten” words are never pluralized, however, this paper argues that every English numeral is a (compound) word. For this purpose, first, it checks if, and shows that, the so-called “syntactically composite” numerals in fact have overall properties of compounds: lexical complexity, lack of derivational affix, a compound stress pattern, allowance of a linker, right-headedness, syntactic inseparability, syntactico-semantic islandhood, and conceptual unity. Second, it also argues that their productivity and compositionality cannot deter numerals from being treated as compounds, on the basis of the facts that some other compounds can in fact be quite productive and compositional. Lastly, it shows that numerals are quite “idiomatic” in that they allow only numerals as their components besides the linker and.